http://blog.filife.com/is-this-fee-fair/ A production of FiLife, a new personal-finance site that goes live later this year. Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:21:31 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 http://blog.filife.com/is-this-fee-fair/#comment-4640 Ty Hardison Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:04:29 +0000 http://blog.filife.com/?p=689#comment-4640 Merchants pay for a service that they obviously find of value otherwise they wouldn't accept cards. Like other costs business incurs to bring their goods and services to market, these fees are embedded in the cost of what they sell and what we buy. The amazing thing to me about this entire debate is while Interchange fees may be 2%, embedded taxes run closer to 20%. Embedded tax and tax compliance costs make everything we buy more expensive and hurts American exports and competitiveness in a global market. So not only do we pay income tax, social security tax, payroll tax, medicare tax, estate tax, etc., we all pay again the embedded business tax of the entire supply chain. Why is the debate over this hidden tax scheme not the top headline of public focus? Merchants pay for a service that they obviously find of value otherwise they wouldn’t accept cards. Like other costs business incurs to bring their goods and services to market, these fees are embedded in the cost of what they sell and what we buy. The amazing thing to me about this entire debate is while Interchange fees may be 2%, embedded taxes run closer to 20%. Embedded tax and tax compliance costs make everything we buy more expensive and hurts American exports and competitiveness in a global market. So not only do we pay income tax, social security tax, payroll tax, medicare tax, estate tax, etc., we all pay again the embedded business tax of the entire supply chain. Why is the debate over this hidden tax scheme not the top headline of public focus?

]]>